“In the second place, the power of neutralizing the gravity of metals, as I have explained to you, enables us to erect works miles above the ground more easily than you do at the surface. In fact the works erect themselves and the most we do is to tether them at the proper height to keep them from going too far. When motion is required to be given them, the globes of light are sometimes attached to a car that is made to run on a single rail elliptical track, which may be suspended at any elevation and reduced to a minimum weight by proper adjustments of its gravitation, the light globe being either suspended from the car or floating above it. The elliptical orbit is inclined enough to enable gravity to propel the car. An automatic shunt turns on repulsion when the car reaches the lowest part of the orbit and it is then forwarded on the up grade portion, shunted again at the top and so on perpetually. Another machine often used is a hollow cylindrical stem suspended from the dome, having a series of wheels, concentric with the cylinder, one above another and caused to revolve horizontally at different rates, by clockwork inside the cylinder. Globes of light are suspended by long wires to these wheels, which by their revolution, at varying rates, cause the globes by centrifugal motion to describe large or small orbits as desired. All sorts of eccentric and peculiar motions are imparted to the globes by variations in the regularity of the revolutions of the wheels, the spheres falling toward the center when the motion is slow and flying outward when it is fast. The mazes of a cotillion are often imitated, and the performance is called the ‘dancing of the spheres’. This is also accompanied by music, sometimes by local bands situated on the ground playing in concert with the movement, at other times by immense instruments operated by the same machinery that drives the spheres.
“It is not difficult for you to imagine the beauty and grandeur of some of these overhead scenes. Of course the power used is electricity, and it is used liberally and freely since its cost is merely nominal. Heat as well as light is supplied through the same means and used for all purposes, domestic, industrial and public. Our houses are very tasteful and often highly ornamental. The architecture is light and graceful and suited to a mild and quiet climate, for we have the pleasant air of your tropics without their storms or excessive heat. A slight sprinkle of rain is all we ever have in the shape of a storm in any part of the interior continent, and these sprinkles are rendered periodical by artificial means. There are no wide agricultural tracts with us, nor densely populated cities, but the population is distributed in towns, and continuous villages line the roads, each of which is devoted to some principal productive industry. There are principal streets that run miles, passing through and connecting these towns, and often bending so as to make a complete circuit. The streets are wide and we are always furnished with a number of rail tracks, and paved with a hard smooth material—sometimes stone and sometimes iron or alumina. The only vehicles used on the streets, besides the rail cars are light, private and pleasure carriages, propelled by storage batteries. The roads that unite the various internal provinces to each other and to the external continent, are chiefly the gravity roads, that I have already described to you. In some cases to save room, the roads are built in stories, one track above another. The work shops and farms, are situated conveniently near on streets parallel to the main thoroughfares, and their products are conveyed from them, and their materials to them, on roads laid on those streets.”